31 March, 2014

The latest
omnibus bill passed by the Greek parliament earlier, contains some
changes for the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) - currently
the largest shareholder of the four "systemic" banks in
Greece - through which the Greek Public will be loaded with more
debt, as permits the selling of HFSF stocks to private banks in prices
that leave the Greek Public with huge losses.

Specifically,
according to the article two of the current bill concerning changes
on the law for the HFSF establishment, the HFSF stock price for
selling to private sector is permitted to be lower than previous
stock covers by the Fund, or than the current price in the stock
market.

Also, some
stock prices for selling or covering, can be lower than the original
price of these stocks when they were bought by the Fund, or than the
current price in the stock market.

It is also
stated that, the members of the Fund's collective institutions have
no power or responsibility against actions or omissions by the
institutions who are responsible for the special liquidation of
financial institutions.

This means
that private interests are protected twice against "annoying"
state supervision, as the Greek Public - although is the basic
guarantor to bailout banks- has minimum or zero power to control
HFSF, anyway.

The latter
can be proven by another change in current bill according to which in
case that the president of the Fund is absent, the meetings are
convened by one of the other board members, except from the Ministry
of Finance representative and the person authorized by the Bank of
Greece.

Besides,
more importantly, according to article 1 of the 3864/2010 law
concerning the HFSF establishment, the fund does not belong to the
public sector. It has administrative and financial autonomy and
operates exclusively under the rules of the private economy. The
purely private nature of the Fund is neither affected by its entire
capital being subscribed by the Greek government, nor by the issuance
of the relevant decisions by the Minister of Finance.

Meanwhile,
what is left from democracy in Greece has been further downgraded, as
the presidency of the Greek parliament rejected the motion of
no-confidence in Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras by SYRIZA,
forcing the major Opposition party to proceed in a new motion of no
confidence against the presidency of the parliament! SYRIZA leader,
Alexis Tsipras, has spoken about a "parliamentary Coup d'état".

Also, the
Scientific Department of the Greek parliament has already set an
issue for the fact that selling banks' stocks with a price lower than
they were bought by the Greek public, as well as other matters of the
current bill, as being unconstitutional.

30 March, 2014

During the
discussion about the recent omnibus bill in Greek parliament,
Greece's main opposition party has tabled a motion of no-confidence
in Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras. SYRIZA's president Alexis
Tsipras characterized Yannis Strournaras as "the main executor
of the death contract against Greek society and Greek citizens".
He also requested the interruption of the discussion for voting the bill.

The motion
of no confidence has been rejected by the parliament, although all
the rest of the parties of the Opposition supported this movement.

Another
omnibus bill will be passed tomorrow by the Greek parliament as
imposed by the Troika lenders to remove the last barriers against
multinational cartels.

Despite the
intense objections by some government MPs and the Opposition, the
government is expected to pass the bill by all means, even with a
tenuous majority, as also some Golden Dawn MPs are now in prison and
have no right to vote.

Democracy
and parliamentary processes in Greece are conducted through blackmail
terms, as Troika blackmails government and government blackmails its
own MPs to vote every neoliberal IMF-type policy that the Troika
dictates.

Troika also
impose huge omnibus bills every time, just before the next lending
package to Greece in order to force government MPs to vote for a
numerous matters without the necessary time to examine each matter
separately. The latest bill contains also some changes that are in
favor of the private banking sector who will gain more at the expense
of the Greek Public.

The
government, however, already starts counting further losses, as
Maximos Charakopoulos, Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Food,
one of the first government officials who expressed intense
objections against the "fresh milk" case, resigned today.

As Greece's
economy is based mainly on small-medium businesses in every sector,
especially agriculture, the bill aims to eliminate the last
small-medium businesses and open the domination of a few
multinational corporations. The last pretexts and hypocrisy of the
government are totally revealed as many governmental executives were
claiming all this time that they will act to reinforce small-medium
businesses and create new jobs.

They now
claim that the prices will fall in many goods due to competition and
that new jobs will be created, but the truth is that the exact
opposite will happen, as the few multinationals will build monopoly
cartels, as happened in Chile under the "Chicago Boys"
advice, and hire only a few people with salaries of 400 euros or
less.

The last
barrier will be to destroy the minimum wage limit and impose such
levels of salaries. Under such conditions, someone in Greece will marginally be able to survive in the next years.

But Greece
is not the issue here, of course. The global neoliberal dictatorship
will try to transform the whole Europe into a 1973 Chile.

28 March, 2014

According to
SYRIZA MP Zoi Konstantopoulou the new omnibus bill aims to erase
cases of briberies!

“This
is about ordinances whose aim is to misdemeanor briberies to
employees (articles 235 and 236 of the criminal code), according to
which, in case that the action for which the bribery is given is not
against the duties of the employee, the later will be punished to
misdemeanor degree (and therefore erased in five years), whatever the
amount of bribery.”

“This
means that, after publishing the bill next week, many cases
concerning briberies above 120,000 euros, even millions, will be
erased, in case that the action for which they are given 'is not
against employee's duties, but simply refer to them'.”

“In
criminal cases, like military equipment contracts and the 'Siemens'
case, which are now under investigation, or other cases for which the
court has taken permanent decision, could be erased or downgraded to
misdemeanor degree.”

These
operations, however, are risky because one or two MPs who really want
to abandon government in order to be rescued against a political
death, may follow the supposed "rebels". Therefore, as the
government has a tenuous majority, there is a danger that the new
bill will not pass from the parliament in the next few days.

Thus
yesterday, "accidentally", two MPs of the Right moderate
nationalist party "Anexartitoi Ellines" - who is against
Troika's policies - announced that they are leaving the party (http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=580401).
The
decision came a few days before the new bill through which the
interests of multinational cartels will be further promoted in
various sectors.

The - now
independent - MPs will be probably recruited to vote for the bill in
case that one or two government MPs refuse to vote it, and it's quite
possible to join the leading government coalition party, "Nea
Dimokratia", after the bill.

Besides, It
will not be the first time that something similar happens. The
Markopoulos-Soldatos case is characteristic, since after leaving Nea
Dimokratia, they re-elected with “Anexartiti Ellines” political
party, in order to validate their stance against catastrophic
policies imposed by the Troika lenders, but in the first chance, left
from party and stayed in ice as independent MPs, in order to be ready
for their come back to “Nea Dimokratia”:

According
to ITAR-TASS News Agency the information came from a source in
Ukrainian Security Service

Key
info:

“Ukrainian
authorities plan to attract US private military company Greystone
Limited to suppress protest moods of the mostly Russian-speaking
population in the east of the country.”

“According
to Ukrainian Security Service, mercenaries will be engaged in
political search and protection of state security over inability of
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to curb on leaders and activists
of pro-Russian movement independently.”

“This
initiative was put forward by oligarchs Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a co-owner
of Ukraine’s PrivatBank, and Serhiy Taruta, head of the industrial
union of Donbass, a coal basin in eastern Ukraine, as these business
tycoons were appointed as governors in central Ukraine’s
Dnepropetrovsk region and eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region,
respectively.”

“A
source in Ukrainian Security Service which participated in recent
special meeting chaired by parliament-appointed interim President
Oleksandr Turchynov reported about this fact.”

“ 'Turchynov
believes that law enforcement agencies in eastern regions cannot
settle the issue of pro-Russian movement themselves, so they decided
to attract foreign mercenaries,' the security official said.”

25 March, 2014

Obama
to support Samaras while Athens center was full of police excluded
for public

The picture
today from the military parade in Athens with no audience, except of
some people who permitted to watch with special invitations, shows
perfectly the police-state that the Samaras administration has
created, but also depicts the distance between the current political
class and people.

As the
government is forced to follow the destructive IMF recipes and is
expected to take new measures after the euro-elections, this picture
was also a message to anyone who will dare to fight against such
policies.

24 March, 2014

“Exactly
15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of
Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a 'humanitarian'
pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives
and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted.”

“Codenamed
'Operation Allied Force,' it was the largest attack ever undertaken
by the alliance. It was also the first time that NATO used military
force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a
sovereign nation that did not pose a real threat to any member of the
alliance.”

“In the
course of the campaign, NATO launched 2,300 missiles at 990 targets
and dropped 14,000 bombs, including depleted uranium bombs and
cluster munitions (unexploded cluster bombs continued to pose a
threat to people long after the campaign was over.) Over 2,000
civilians were killed, including 88 children, and thousands more were
injured. Over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to leave their
homeland in Kosovo.”

“In
what the alliance described as 'collateral damage', its
airstrikes destroyed more than 300 schools, libraries, and over 20
hospitals. At least 40,000 homes were either completely eliminated or
damaged and about 90 historic and architectural monuments were
ruined. That is not to mention the long-term harm caused to the
region’s ecology and, therefore, people’s health, as well as the
billion-dollar economic damage.”

“Rights
organization Amnesty International accused the allied forces of
committing war crimes: 'Indications
are that NATO did not always meet its legal obligations in selecting
targets and in choosing means and methods of attack, On the basis of
available evidence, including NATO's own statements and accounts of
specific incidents, Amnesty International believes that - whatever
their intentions - NATO forces did commit serious violations of the
laws of war leading in a number of cases to the unlawful killings of
civilians,'
the rights watchdog said in a report published in June 2000.”

“Back
then, Slobodan Milosevic's forces were engaged in armed conflict with
an Albanian rebel group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which
sought the province’s separation from Yugoslavia. Former US
President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert
Gelbard, had earlier described the KLA as 'without
any questions, a terrorist group.'
(The KLA was later repeatedly accused of being involved in the organ
trafficking of Serbs in the late 1990s.)”

“An
incident involving the 'mass
killing'
of Albanians in central Kosovo’s village of Racak – a KLA
stronghold – became a major excuse and justification for NATO’s
decision to start its operation. Serbs were blamed for the deaths of
dozens of Albanian 'civilians'
on January 15, 1999. However, it was alleged that the accusations
could have been false and the bodies actually belonged to KLA
insurgents whose clothes had been changed.”

23 March, 2014

Neoliberal
dictatorship in Greece is ready to take new cruel suppression
measures to finish the experiment

by system
failure

Samaras
administration announced recently its will to distribute the primary
surplus. Government's show continued through the known tactics, as
the government officials played their roles and the Greek PM declared
with a supposedly strict manner that he is going to distribute
primary surplus, despite Troika's orders not to do so.

The show
continued also inside government through the "fresh milk"
case and the supposed "rebel" MPs declaring that they will
not retreat
(http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2014/03/21/greeces-coalition-government-at-risk-to-drown-in-fresh-milk/),
in an attempt to prevent the total defeat of the Socialist party
PASOK in euro-elections and persuade voters that they stand for their
own "red lines". The mainstream media presented these
disagreements as a major issue. It is not the first time that such a
show was played:

Also, the
termination of polls' prohibition before the elections that the Greek
Ministry of Interior recently announced, was not accidental. Polls
will be used as a tool for investigating the trends of the public
opinion until the euro-elections day, so that the moves of the next
day to be determined.

Thus, in
case that the polls will reflect a non-reversible situation for the
government, despite the trivial "gifts" to citizens, one
should expect preparations for new coalitions and political
formations in case of early national elections. The political
formation "River" and other supposed Center-Left powers
have already taken position to replace the nearly dissolved PASOK
(http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1805),
in order to contribute to a new coalition, with the neoliberal Right
Nea Dimokratia party again in charge. These political formations will
be promoted again with the motto of the "responsible"
political powers who want to save country.

At the same
time, a "retouch" operation for the neo-nazi party Golden
Dawn has been started, as well as for the Left in Greece. With its
basic executives now in prison, Golden Dawn has recently moderated
its actions and rhetoric inside and outside the Greek parliament,
while the systemic establishment attempts to fix party's image, in
order to be used by contributing to a potential new government
coalition - probably with a different name - if necessary. As always,
this coalition will be guided by the neoliberal Nea Dimokratia inside
which there are many far-right trends ideologically close to Golden
Dawn.

Concerning
the Left in Greece and especially SYRIZA, the Leftist party in
Opposition, another "retouch" operation is attempted, in
order to be "domesticated" and come closer to the systemic
establishment interests. The high degree of destruction in Greece
will become in essence a minefield for any potential future Left
government of tenuous majority.

However,
until all these things happen, the government wants to buy some time
to finish the experiment, regardless the result of euro-elections.
Therefore, the announcement of the primary surplus distribution close
to the euro-elections day, with a special reference to soldiers,
police and other uniformed personnel, shows that the government is
ready to take new cruel suppression measures after euro-elections, in
case that citizens will turn their back massively to the destructive
neoliberal policies through their vote.

The centers
of power in the European neoliberal economic empire know that the
current Greek government will expire soon and therefore, they've
given orders to finish the experiment at any cost, so that to expand
it to the whole Europe.

The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
released new shocking data for Greece confirming one more time
Troika's destructive neoliberal policies. Key points:

"Total
household income in Greece dropped by 1/3 between 2007 and 2012, with
average losses of some 4400 euros per person. This is the biggest
fall in the OECD and four times as big as the loss recorded in the
average Eurozone country."

"Between
2008 and 2013, unemployment swelled at a rate of 3800 per week and
60% of the 1.4 million jobseekers are long-term unemployed."

"Since
2007/8, total spending on social protection and health fell by some
18% in real terms, compared to a 14% real-term increase in the
average OECD country."

"After
more than five years of severe economic decline, Greece remains one
of only two EU countries without a nationwide minimum-income benefit
(the other one is Italy)."

"...
employment plunged by almost 1 million (or 20%) since 2008 and
unemployment remains high. At the same time, falling wages have
compounded household income losses. The drop in real wages was the
largest in the OECD, but the resulting reduction in labour costs has
so far not reversed the 5-year-long decline in employment levels."

"The
number of “jobless” families has nearly doubled since 2012 as
many as 1 in 5 Greek working-age adults now live in a household where
nobody works."

"A
range of indicators point to households’ growing difficulties in
meeting basic needs. The share of people saying that they cannot
afford food has doubled*, putting this subjective measure of economic
distress at a higher level than in some emerging economies with much
lower per-capita income, such as China or Brazil."

"Emigration
to other OECD countries has doubled too. Young people in particular
have been emigrating in increasing numbers, reducing potential future
economic growth and further accelerating population ageing."

*
Specifically, in 2006/2007 the percentage of people in Greece who
answered "Yes" to the question "Have there been times
in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food
that you or your family needed?" was 8.9%, while in 2011/12 the
corresponding percentage doubled, reaching 17.9%. It is worth to
notice that the corresponding percentage for US in 2011/12 reached
21.1%, thus an increase of nearly 1.6 times relative to the 2006/2007
period (13.4%).

20 March, 2014

"The
Iran-Contra scandal was huge and should have been much bigger. What
the US decided to do was to open up ties to Tehran by selling them
surface to air missiles. The profits of those sales were then put
into banks in Switzerland and were removed to pass to the Contras. We
were trying to overthrow the Sandinistas.

What
Iran-Contra represented at the very heart of the problem was to
ignore American law. American law clearly stated that the US was not
allow to provide military assistance to the Contras, and American law
also stated that we were not going to do business with governments
such as Iran that were involved with terrorist actions.

The
instability that we have contributed to, creates the kind of chaos
and disarray that leads to more immigration because you can argue
that if we move into the societies and contribute to this dysfunction
we have a moral obligation to help the people who feel unsafe in the
situations that we in part have created."

Melvin
Goodman, former Division Chief for the CIA, reveals how the
Iran-Contra actions of the US government were used to fund the
Contras against the Sandinistas and destabilize Nicaragua in the
documentary “Harvest of Empire”.

The
Documentary shows how the US interference in the most Latin American
countries brought chaos in their societies and resulted to massive
immigrations of people who tried to escape from hellish situations.
Most of them went to US which are now paying the price of their
destructive policies and interference.

The
documentary was screened at the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary
Festival.

19 March, 2014

In one
of the best Brian De Palma's movies, "Dressed to Kill"
(1980), starring Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine, the mysterious
murderer was specially dressed before murdering, wearing black
glasses. What I remember most from this movie, is Dickinson in her
finest moments, De Palma's neo-Hitchcock suspense, and title of the
movie that for some reason impressed me. Apparently, I subsequently
explain, why murders have a ritual and a protocol and the title was
highlighting this process

by Makis
Andronopoulos

"Dressed
to Kill" came up in my mind's hard disk, as an "inspiration"
of what is happening in Ukraine and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Observing
the repeat of the Yugoslavian drama, someone would say that in
Ukraine the West is dressed to kill. Is this a chance for US and EU
to escape from the monstrous bubble created by monetarism and
neoliberalism that puts barriers against their need to grow as
much as the want? Or, perhaps this was the only solution for West to
escape from the social pressure that can bring undesirable overturns
to the Western system?

Not only
Americans, but Germans too declare that have surpassed their "heavy
nazi past" and are willing to send troops abroad in "peace"
missions, through their president Joachim Gauck. We all know that
something is not right. Obviously everyone knows this, even those who
hide behind great words for democracy, self-determination, etc.

As we know
that the war in Iraq cost 3 billion dollars, we understand that wars
must be cheaper for the big bosses to earn money faster, thus wars
must be quicker and more efficient. The American military power must
achieve these goals in order the US to retain their dominance.

According to
CNBC, US have spent 682 billion dollars for defence in 2012, while
the 10 countries following, have spent together 652 billion, (China
170, Russia 100, UK-Japan-France-Saudi Arabia 50-60 each, Germany and
India nearly 40 and Italia-Brazil nearly 30 billion dollars). Thus,
many were not surprised by the announcement of the US Secretary of
Defense, Chuck Hagel, for defence budget cuts.

The American
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), created in 1957 to
contribute Pentagon with new weapons and technologies, seems that it
has a significant role. The Agency is responsible for the global
system position tracking, the famous M-16, unmanned aircrafts,
Stealth fighters, etc. There are new projects for six new generation
weapons*, like guided bullets and multiple target missiles launched
by unmanned aircrafts of maximum height. According to some info,
DARPA's Tactical Technology Office is concentrating on technologies
for the compression and control of magnetism flow.

It's obvious
that all these things are made to be used. Besides, they cost
billions.

17 March, 2014

The plan of the neoliberal dictatorship for Russia is postponed for now. Banksters however know to wait for suitable conditions to mature. They will try to get rid of Putin by any means to put their puppet with the help of the Russian oligarchs currently in self-exile. The ultimate goal is to break the vast Russian territory into many pieces and put Western-type puppets in power to take control of all the resources. A science fiction scenario? They've already done it back in 1991 with the Soviet Union, why not now? The big question is: How will China respond in such a threat, as it would be fully isolated and circled by Westernized neoliberal regimes and governments?

13 March, 2014

"...
I don't believe this theory that Troika comes here and tell us what
to do. Not at all. And this because Troika consists of 15
middle-level and 4 or 5 higher-level officers. No one has nobel
prize, no one is a politician, no one has lived in Greece for 50 or
60 years. What did they do? They have come with a general concept, a
plan, a specific perception and recipe, which applied in various
countries, and in 3 or 4 months they built hundreds of thousands
guides, decisions, etc., based on this recipe. It's impossible all
this stuff to have written by 15 people in 3 months."

"A
parallel business has been set. This business is, forces of the Greek
neoliberalism, bank CEOs, former bank executives, big law bureaus
that serve specific interests, and all this system informs, makes and
evaluates suggestions that flood Troika. Troika takes all this stuff
to embody it to a general plan which finally shapes its proposition
because Troika didn't know anything about Greece, didn't know [for
example] how many heavy occupations we have, how many must be cut. A
middle-level officer couldn't know how the Greek tax system works."

"...
the Memorandum was not only what these interests wanted here, but
also some instructions from our lenders abroad, thus it was a mix of
the lenders' orders abroad and banking interests as well as business
interests inside the country. All this thing was fixed and then they
came and told us 'What can we do? It must be done according to the
Memorandum'"

"As
if we are stupid, as if we don't understand that half of those they
imposed in Memorandum are due to their own interests. Let's be clear.
They could not say then, dare to say that measures will be taken
against the needs of the society, country and majority because they
want to take revenge for those things they didn't manage to impose
back in 1990-1993, or, in the second phase of the so-called extreme
modernization."

These are
the words of Nikos Kotzias, Professor of Political Theories of
International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus, who
three years ago, was speaking about a "parallel" business
of interests that contributed on writing the Memorandum.

Three years
later, a government official speaks publicly about interests that
actually the Troika serves. Specifically, Michalis Papadopoulos,
Deputy Transport Minister said among other things:

“The
troika has certain obsessions that are groundless and are part of the
way of thinking created by its technical teams,” he told
Athens 984 radio station. “They are like a corner shop, where
everyone who passes leaves something and then the troika picks up on
it and says: “Ah, yes! You have to do this as well”.”

“There
are institutional bodies, Greek and foreign, who pass by the troika
and say: “Do this as well”,” said the deputy minister.
“The troika has adopted a way of thinking that involves them
serving particular interests.”

“We are
witnessing a huge geopolitical game in which the aim is the
destruction of Russia as a geopolitical opponent of the US or of the
global financial oligarchy…..The realization of this project is in
line with the concept of global domination that is being carried out
by the US.”

"How
Washington conducts itself in this new conflict will tell us whether
the authors of the War on Terror–that public relations hoax that
concealed the goals of eviscerated civil liberties and one world
government–were really serious about actualizing their NWO vision
or if it was merely the collective pipedream of corporate CEOs and
bored bankers with too much time on their hands."

"The
western oil giants have been playing “catch up” for more than a
decade with Putin checkmating them at every turn. As it happens, the
wily KGB alum has turned out to be a better businessman than any of
his competitors, essentially whooping them at their own game, using
the free market to extend his network of pipelines across Central
Asia and into Europe. That’s what the current crisis is all about.
Big Oil came up “losers” in the resource war so now they want
Uncle Sam to apply some muscle to put them back in the game."

"...
Yanukovych rejected an offer from Chevron that the EU and Washington
were pushing, and went with the sweeter deal from Russia. [...] that
pissed off the bigwigs who decided to incite the rioting. (“Putin’s
sudden offer of a 30% cheaper gas bill and a $15 billion aid package
provoked the protests…”)"

“Resource
scarcity, competition to dominate Eurasian energy corridors, are
behind Russian militarism and US interference…Ukraine is caught
hapless in the midst of this accelerating struggle to dominate
Eurasia’s energy corridors in the last decades of the age of fossil
fuels.”

"...
NWO mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski characterized the conflict with
Russia in terms of cutting off “Western access to the Caspian Sea
and Central Asia”. For some unknown reason, America’s behemoth
oil corporations think the resources that lie beneath Russian soil
belong to them. The question is whether their agents will push Obama
to put American troops at risk to assert that claim. If they do,
there’s going to be a war."

"In
essence, this is a war between the big companies to control the
energy deposits. The biggest barrier now are the state-controlled
giants in Russia and China and neoliberalism is trying to conquer
these countries. The Western companies have declared war against
companies like Gazprom, as they seek to control all the energy
deposits, but in this case things are not so easy. The neoliberal
model that opens the road for the Western capital, has to face now,
two superpowers."